Posts Tagged ‘advanced linked in workshop’

LinkedIn is currently the world’s biggest professional networking platform, so it’s not a major surprise that to keep things running smoothly, the company has made a few adjustments to improve its user experience. The redesign of the site comes after the upgrade of its app. The desktop tweaks are focused on making the crossover between the two platforms more similar in the hope that users will spend more time each day on the site – only 25% of the platform’s 450 million users used it monthly.

The new interface (UI) boasts an updated color scheme, a shift from black to a dark teal. The menu bar at the top of the page is slightly thinner, mirroring the mobile app. Listed below are all changes you can expect to see; any features and areas not mentioned remain as they were before the recent upgrade.

Aside from the ads on the right-hand side of the page, all the usual features are on the main page with the option to share an update, photo or article at the top of the page. What might confuse a few people, particularly any newcomers, is the “publish” option is just below that, which gives you direct access to the publishing feature.

The profile rank feature seems to have disappeared since the update; perhaps it will return in time. In the meantime, be selective and test out your results. Your profile views and headline are shown directly under your photo. The timeline is the only new feature added to the homepage and looks similar to a Facebook feed with a count of how many people have read your latest post.

Your Profile

The bedrock of LinkedIn is now accessible via the “Me” icon in the menu bar and is depicted by a tiny snapshot of your profile picture. Your photo is now circular so you might have to try a few different sizes to get a good fit. It appears that most people are doing best with dimensions in the 1800-by-300 pixel range, rather than the 1536-by-738 size LinkedIn suggests uploading.

To see more than just your summary, people now have to click the “more” button, so it’s crucial you make those first two lines count. The only real downside about the new profile section is that you can no longer reorder the different parts of your profile.

Other People’s Profiles

All the contact info for others’ profiles is now displayed on the far right-hand side along with website URLs. The options for sharing, removing, blocking, reporting, unfollowing and sending a request are all visible on the top right if you press the three little dots next to the centered profile picture.

The old “in common” feature is now called “highlights,” making it easily accessible, while just below that you see others’ posts.

My Network

When you used to click on “My Network” you were met with “Connections,” “Add Contacts,” “Alumni” and “People You May Know.” The new version takes you straight to your invitations and people you may know instead; click “see all” for the rest of your connections and keep in mind that the announcements feature has moved to your notification area. We’ve lost the “Alumni” search option, but you can get around this by searching for the school in the search bar.

Notifications

The notifications feature is new and improved, now with its own separate page; reach it by going to the top menu and clicking on the bell icon (this was previously a flag icon). This layout makes it easier to track engagement and respond, you’ll still receive all the notifications you did previously.

These changes to the platform are more cosmetic than technical and only time will tell if they enhance the site long term. For newcomers and those who don’t use the advanced features, the changes are certainly worth it. For more experienced users, it doesn’t offer much in terms of newness yet. However, it’s still early days for potentially larger changes, as Microsoft only acquired LinkedIn in December.

Communicating your message and getting people to pick up the phone or visit your website through effective posts

Building an effective profile page

Marketing your events or finding events you might like to attend

Keeping in touch in order to build business relationships

Getting recommended by lots of people

The cost of attending is discounted to only £69 + VAT for a standard ticket. Or you can upgrade to a VIP ticket for only £170 + VAT and get a copy of the workshop on eight DVD’s (value £99), so you can train others in your team, plus a copy of LinkedIn 2.0 (a 100-page workbook, with a value of £50).

How to win £80,000+ per person, per year in leads and sales on LinkedIn

The problem

The biggest problems that small business face on LinkedIn is that they either don’t understand it, or they don’t have the time to use it. The fact is, if you sell to senior management, middle management, or business owners, then your target market is on LinkedIn.

In fact, there are 377,000,000 people worldwide and over 19,000,000 in the UK on LinkedIn. So, the question is – How can you grow your database, keep in touch with your clients, create leads, and turn those leads into sales?

Your options

There are several options for you to consider:

Do nothing and lose out on sales from this fantastic income stream
Continue as you are and win the same about of business from LinkedIn, as you currently do
Take action to improve the marketing of your business.

How Your Profile Picture Can Lead to More LinkedIn Business Opportunities

There is a connection to having a professional profile picture to get better LinkedIn business opportunities. Many of us think that what we put on our profile pictures do not matter in the long run. However, the right profile picture is actually like putting your best face forward, especially if it’s for business.

Your profile picture on your website and your social media sites says a lot about you. Remember that this is the picture that your colleagues, your boss, your potential employer, employees or potential clients are looking at. Almost all people are visually-oriented and so, our eyes usually gravitate towards photos and videos when on a website. Therefore, it would be a waste if you ignore this advantage.

When you want to appear like a well-respected business and to have more LinkedIn business opportunities, your photos need to have a professional look.

This means you should put a lot of effort in your profile picture. You need to look and act the part as well. Take the following into consideration when thinking about your profile picture.

Wear something professional. If you were to go to an interview, what would you wear?

If you could, it would be better to have your profile picture taken by a professional photographer.

Be mindful of the background that you use in your photo. Make sure it is appropriate to your industry as well.

Have good lighting and make sure that it is well lit.

Don’t forget to smile.

You don’t need to get a lot of photos for your profile picture. You can maintain a single photo across all your accounts so that your clients will be able to remember who you are and you appear organised and consistent. When you are consistent, people tend to associate it with reliability.

Don’t forget that your profile picture is the face of your business. While some people place their logos as their profile picture, this is not really the face that most people are looking for. Having a real profile picture is desirable as people associate this with credibility and professionalism.

Do not waste this opportunity to show people about your brand and to open up more LinkedIn business opportunities.

Take the Prudent Marketer as an example and see how Steve Mills uses his profile picture across all his online sites.

For details of Steve’s forthcoming LinkedIn webinars, workshops and his DVD Programme go to www.thelinkedinacademy.com

My top 5 LinkedIn Marketing Tips

To create 40% of your leads from LinkedIn

LinkedIn is without a doubt a website that can win you business. I would go as far as to say that you are leaving a pot of gold, sitting on the table each and every month, by not Marketing your business properly on LinkedIn.

Here are my top 5 tips:

Pick up the phone and call the people you know on LinkedIn. They are your contacts, friends and business associates and so you MUST start to build those relationships. So, call them, meet them, invite them to the Footie, Rugby, Golf, or other events

Communicate with them through email, within LinkedIn, or better still get them out of LinkedIn and into your e-mail database

Post our ideas and information on LinkedIn that positions you as an expert in what you do and do this several times per day. You want to be the Key Person of Influence

Make sure your personal and company profiles look great and are up to date

Take a look at the targeting of the PPC Advertising. It is worth looking into.

One of the Social Media Tools for Business That You Can’t Afford Not to Use

Videos are one of the most useful and often neglected social media tools for business. It attracts a lot of interest due to its highly visual nature not to mention engaging content that leads to a lot of discussions online.

A prime example of the effectiveness of videos is through YouTube. There are so many videos uploaded to the site across all niches, and a user can easily get lost among the sea of videos hosted on the site. When users like a video they see, they will immediately share this with their friends, who in turn will share the video with their network if they see value or appreciate the content of the video. With the right content and presentation, a video can quickly go viral these days!

Another upside of using videos as one of your social media tools for business is its appeal to people who do not like to read. People who’d rather watch videos can search for tutorials online or find books turned to movies and even videos on their worst or favourite school subjects. Watching the videos will make it easier for anybody including learning about anything.

These are just some of the reasons why it is imperative for any company and business to include videos in their arsenal of social media tools for business!

Although it sounds simple to create a video and upload it to YouTube or on to any other video hosting sites, your need to keep a few things in mind in order to create effective marketing videos for your business.

How to maximise the use of videos to complement with your other social media tools for business:

Make sure that you know your audience. Of course, you should know who you are creating a video for. You’re not creating a video for kids, college kids, parents, and professionals or, in short, the general public. You are creating a video with a specific target in mind; and that is, your target market,

Have a clear message. Now that you have a target market or demographic, think about the message that you want to deliver. Do you want to encourage, inspire, teach or invite them to a seminar perhaps? Whatever your message may be, you have to make sure that your message is clear, simple and relevant for your target audience.

Have a set budget. Of course, you will need to spend to create a decent video. You might even need to hire a professional video production company to help you create a more streamlined video which would be perfect for your business. Either way, you need to set a budget to ensure that you don’t go beyond your limit.

Using social media tools for business is a must nowadays. If you want more information on how to leverage the power of social media, you can follow Steve Mills.

A big thank you to everyone on the LinkedIn Webinar today. We had over 100 people on the webinar, including people in Italy, France and USA. I am now looking forward to our next LinkedIn Event on 19th March 2015, which is a one day workshop.

What I Did to Increase LinkedIn Profile Views

1) Amended my title.

Time: 1 minute.

When I looked at people similar to me, I saw a list that was heavily concentrated with Managing Director titles. I modified my title from the Managing Director to the highly more searchable “Marketing Advice and Training.”

2) Inserted keywords into my Name field.

Time: 1 minute.

Admittedly, it looks a little weird when people do this, but since Keywords was a clogged path to my profile, I thought that I would try. I added “Marketing Advice and Training” after my name, surfacing those keywords to the highest level of my profile.

3) Added keywords to my Professional Headline.

Time: 2 minutes.

I replaced the company names with the functions I perform, specifically, “Marketing Advice and Training.”

4) Optimized my Summary.

Time: 10 minutes.

Before this exercise, my summary contained a list of how I help business owners. But who’s searching for the terms I was using on LinkedIn? Nobody. So I spent a little time and re-wrote this section using keywords. (LinkedIn helps you to do this.)

5) Expanded my Skills entries.

Time: 3 minutes.

I gave this section a thorough refresh, hitting LinkedIn’s 50 skill limit.

6) Syndicated blog posts.

Time: 7 minutes.

I adapted one blog post that I’d written for my website and it got over 5,000 views.

7) Changed Profile Viewing Setting from ‘Anonymous’ to ‘Public.’

Time: 1 minute.

To improve reciprocal visits, now when I visit a profile, that member can see that it was me who visited them. Maybe some will visit me in return.

8) Added my LinkedIn account to my email signature & Twitter profile.

Time: 2 minutes.

Another minor change – While I was in profile clean-up mode, I edited descriptions of past jobs to adhere to the action/results format.

The Results

Given the minor time investment of just under half an hour, I wasn’t sure what sort of results I could expect. I basically was trying to Raise my Game and get more views. Well, small changes have made a big difference!

In the 30 days prior to the optimisation project, my profile had been viewed 930 times. Following the exercise, my profile received 1,566 views over the same period of time and this was over the Christmas period!

I also moved to No.1 in the rankings on LinkedIn for people like me, which was an increase of 4%. My profile was shared 56 times and I was endorsed 122 times and even better, my posts were share by 268 people. Let’s estimate that these 268 people each had and average of 350 contacts. That means that my posts were shared with 93,800 people.

Not bad for 30mins work! Want to win more business from LinkedIn? Click on the button below…

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The Prudent Marketer

The Barn, Sherborn St John
Basingstoke, Hants, RG24 9LJ

Telephone: +44 (0)1256 242272
The LinkedIn Training Academy is a privately ran organisation and not part of LinkedIn PLC. Its aim is to help members of LinkedIn to use the site, to grow their business.